


Danse Macabre

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M, New Orleans, witch!Ruby, witch!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A spell goes wrong and leaves Sam bound to the literal Devil, but it turns out Lucifer isn't all that bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Danse Macabre

**Author's Note:**

> For Samifer Week 2014, based on the suggested prompt 'southern gothic'. 
> 
> Set in 1889, although its historical accuracy is debatable.

Sam wakes up and there’s a man lying on the floor of his bedroom. 

It’s not anyone he recognizes, someone with soft blond hair curling against the back of his neck, long prettily curved spine under pale skin, head tucked against his forearms as he sleeps. He’s wearing pants but no shirt and Sam forces back the low curl of desire in his stomach as he sits up, rubbing the corners of his eyes. Keeps blinking, vaguely considering that this might be a dream, and any second now the man is going to disappear.

He doesn’t. 

So Sam sort of freaks out. It’s only natural, his immediate visceral reaction to the way this man looks coalescing from vague shimmers of desire into hard bolts of terror. He considers going for the shotgun but it’s too far, all the way on the other side of the room, and in order to get to it he’d have to step over this guy, and Sam—Sam is not ready to die today. 

So what actually ends up happening is that Sam’s feet hit the floor, cold tile in the early morning, sending shivers rocketing up his legs, and then his guest’s eyes fly open, startled suddenly awake, sharp inhale of breath, every muscle tensing under his skin. The color of his irises is stunning, sharp piercing shade of blue that Sam’s never seen, and he’s rendered momentarily incapable of speech. 

They stare at each other for maybe three seconds, and then Sam stands up, using his full height like he hates doing, and says, “I want you out of my house in ten seconds or I’m gonna start shooting.”

The man blinks up at him, his eyelids dropping every few seconds like he wants to go back to sleep, and oh _hell_ no, Sam’s not having that. He sort of lunges down, intent on grabbing his shoulder, hauling him up, but the second their skin makes contact it’s like every internal organ Sam has goes on temporary shutdown. His hand is hot, almost blistering, against the cold muscle under his palm, and he shudders again, but for a different reason. The ice sears in his skin, goes sliding across his whole body, and he drops back, mouth open, staring. 

“What the hell,” he says, flexing his hand, expecting it to turn red or maybe black, and fall off. For a second, less than that, there’s an incredible power running through him, like the feeling of a locomotive charging full-speed on the Union-Pacific Railroad. It’s as frozen as the touch was but Sam’s not uncomfortable, not really. It rockets inside him and Sam has an unreal moment where he thinks he might die and then it’s over, like it never happened. 

He stares down at his guest, and he stares back up at Sam, no indication on his face that he felt anything like what Sam just felt. All that supercharged wastelands lightning. _Fuck._

“Sorry for waking you,” Sam says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I just. Uh. I guess you’re with Ruby?”

There’s no answer. His guest squints at him, running his tongue over his mouth, and god but that does things to Sam, makes him flush and he’s so grateful for how dark it still is. 

“You want me to go get her for you?” Sam asks, standing again. “I mean. I don’t know why she would’ve left you in here, s’kinda—whatever. You want her? She’s just down the hall—”

“Sam,” the man says, slow, almost uncertain, testing the letters of Sam’s name on his tongue like they weigh something, and Sam blinks. 

“I don’t—”

His guest makes an odd sound at the back of his throat, low and kind of guttural, an early-morning noise that sounds strangely primal. Sits up, careful and with odd jerky movements, testing out each limb before it goes, and then he’s fully facing Sam, legs crossed in front of him and head tilted to the side slightly. “I’m not—with Ruby,” he says, still kind of measuring the words out. “Her name didn’t—bring me here.”

“Uh,” Sam says, fully aware of how this conversation keeps getting stranger and stranger, wondering if he still has his shotgun loaded in his closet. “What.”

His guest makes another one of those strange sounds, stands. He’s just pushed himself off the floor with his feet when the wings spread off his shoulders, long and fire-colored, edged with deep maroon, faint flecks of gray showing between the shades of ochre and sienna. There’s bone in there, too, and striated muscle that Sam actually sees flexing as he watches, long torn tendons of it. 

Sam’s eyes flick up from the wings to his guest’s head and there are horns there now, dark and sharp at the tips, crumbling a little closer to his skull. 

So. That’s new. 

*

Sam is actually really tempted to shove his stranger into the closet and leave him there, bound and gagged, until he gets back from Ruby’s apartment. Because dragging someone around that looks the way he does—even in New Orleans, even this close to Halloween, it wouldn’t be acceptable. 

Also, Sam doesn’t know who he is. He seems to have a lot of trouble understanding what Sam is saying, or at least he takes a while to process it and then get a response out. It’s like speaking to someone who knew English a long time ago but has since then forgotten how to speak it, which makes Sam feel suspicious, and then guilty. As he’s getting ready to go out, dressing in the kitchen because his guest doesn’t seem to understand the concept of privacy, he tries a few sentences in Latin— _quid est nomen tibi? unde estis? te metuam?_ —but he doesn’t get anything from that, either. 

So he tries leaving him in the closet, enunciating slow: “I will be right back. I just have to go ask Ruby something,” but the second he’s turned away and headed for the door, something sharp and burning cold pierces his chest. Angry frozen fire sensation and it only gets worse the farther he walks, spreading into his stomach and his arms and then his legs, so that when he’s at the door he can barely stand up straight. 

He looks around and his guest has sort of fallen out of the closet and is lying stretched towards him, wings flexing helplessly against the bare floor, whimpering, “Sam… _please_ …” 

It isn’t until Sam’s gone back to him that the feeling diminishes, leaving him soaked in sweat, gasping for breath. Wings are flapping and there’s a strong smell of petrichor in the air, of heat lightning and the faintly chemical smell of laboratories Sam used to explore back at school. His guest grips Sam’s fingers, skin strangely cool considering how hard he’s breathing, and his throat works for several seconds before he manages:

“Don’t—separate us. Can’t.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, flustered and alarmed and kind of freaking out, just a little. “Yeah, okay.”

They go to Ruby’s apartment together, the wings dragging against the walls as they walk, making a noise that reminds Sam of curtains rustling. Sam bangs on the front door, not caring what time it is, and a few minutes later Ruby answers, her hair tousled, dark circles under her eyes like she hasn’t gotten much sleep. 

Well, good. Because Sam’s pretty sure whatever mess he’s in right now, it’s all Ruby’s fault. 

“Who the fuck is this,” Sam hisses, gesturing at his companion, who is kind of holding onto his arm, kind of flapping his wings, and Ruby looks, and her eyes go wide. 

“ _Shit,”_ she hisses. 

“Yeah. You think?”

“Come on inside,” she says, and opens the door wider. Not quite wide enough for the wings, and Sam notices he has to squeeze them hard against his back to get them through, wincing like it hurts to draw them close. 

The door shuts again and Sam says, “You better have a damn good explanation for this, Rube—”

“You don’t remember?” she asks, staring at him, wide-eyed, and Ruby Cortese is many things, but a good actress is not one of them. 

Sam glares at her. “Remember what?”

She takes in a breath. “Um,” she says. “Well, it’s. We, uh. Last night—”

“Could you get to the _point,_ Ruby.” Sam is bristling, all his muscles held close, trying not to start anything crazy, and next to him his guest shifts his wings, kind of rubbing them along Sam’s back. There’s a light, barely perceptible sensation, like faint pinpricks, and Sam doesn’t know why but he feels—calmer. Better, and less likely to start the second Civil War in Ruby’s living room. 

She says, “It happened last night, in your apartment,” and sits down across from them, her fingers steepled on her knee. 

*

_**Eight hours ago:** _

“So, we should probably try summoning a demon,” Ruby said, and Sam choked on his water. 

Ava gave him a few comforting pats on the back, her tiny hand settled on his spine. 

“We should _what?”_ he asked, when he could breathe again. 

They were in his apartment: he and Ruby and Jake and Ava and Lily and Andy. The coven Sam had never imagined he’d be part of when he moved to New Orleans ten months ago, desperate to get away from Lawrence, to try his hand at Tulane Law School. Instead, he’d found himself working a steady job at a bookstore, struggling to make the money for university on his own because none of his family would fund him, and finding it near impossible, with how little he was paid. 

When he’d met the others, searching for a sixth member to even things out, Sam had expected to just get involved in some small white magic things. Growing herbs out of season. Getting a small raise in his paycheck. But Ruby had proven herself to be as cunning as she was beautiful, and since he joined the coven he’s witnessed her give Ava’s fiancé a minor burn on his wrist for cheating, watched her put Andy’s twin brother in the hospital with food poisoning for stealing Andy’s girlfriend—among other things. The only reason Sam’s managed to convince her not to use her abilities for him is by stating, over and over, that he’s just as strong as she is ( _true_ ) and is just waiting for the right time ( _false_ ). 

“Summon a demon,” Ruby repeated now, smirking a little over the candlelight. Her face was thrown into shadow and for a moment she looked weirdly demonic herself, eyes pitched so far towards black that Sam actually flinched, his nails digging into the floor. 

“Why is this a good idea to you?” he asked her, and looked around their tight circle. “This isn’t a good idea to anyone else, is it.”

Ava didn’t answer. 

Lily and Jake looked at each other, eyebrows raised. 

Tentatively, Andy said, “Ruby swears she’s looked at every book that was ever published about this—”

“So this is a thing that has been discussed before!” Sam was almost shouting, one hand tangled in his hair without thinking, almost jumping to his feet but Jake was pressing a hand to his knee, holding him down. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Rube, what the fuck were you _thinking!”_

She shrugged. “Andy said it—I’ve read up on this stuff, Sam. It’s not like I’m flying blind into the prospect of demon summoning.”

“I don’t care if you were raised on the subject, this isn’t something you fuck around with. Okay?”

Ruby looked at the others, and then at Sam. “So that’s a no?”

He drew in a breath. Glanced once at the circle, but they weren’t looking at him. They were looking at Ruby, and for a second he hated them, all of them—even Andy, and Andy was the closest thing he had to a friend, here. 

“It’s a no,” he said to Ruby. “No fucking way. I’m not doing that. You get involved, you’re on your own. I want no part of it.”

“Sam—”

“I’m going to bed,” he grunted, and stood up, Jake not bothering to try and hold him back this time. “You all can see yourselves out.”

*

_**Now:** _

“So,” Sam says, his eyebrows raised a little. “I’m guessing you didn’t see yourselves out.”

Ruby swallows. “—No,” she says, softly, sounding almost apologetic, and Sam bites his lower lip very hard because holy _fuck._ He looks over at his guest, who is staring at the fireplace behind Ruby’s head, and at the horns sitting cracked on top of his head. 

“So that’s the demon you summoned,” he says, gesturing. 

“Yes—” Ruby starts, and it’s like she’s flipped a switch. Immediately Sam’s winged companion is on his feet, yelling in that strange guttural tone from earlier, rapid sequence of words Sam doesn’t recognize. It’s not Latin, it’s not Greek, it’s not even a branch of either. It sounds ancient and dead and powerful and Sam’s torn between wanting to curl away from it and wanting to move closer, drink it all in. He feels an odd draw to this man—demon, whatever he is—something tugging and almost intimate at the center of his chest, where the cold had irritated him earlier when he’d tried to leave alone. 

“What the _fuck,”_ Ruby says, staring.

He stops, mid-sentence, glaring at her, chest heaving. His eyes are red, mouth tight at the corners. He looks impossibly furious. 

“Hey,” Sam says, standing up and putting his hand on his shoulders, just above the cut of the wings where they dip into his skin. “Hey, it’s okay.” He doesn’t know why he’s trying to comfort a demon, of all things, but what the hell. Clearly he doesn’t want to be here, either. 

He looks over at Sam, nostrils flared. “Sam,” he says, the word wrenched from his throat. 

“Let’s just.” Sam glances at Ruby, and at his demon, and at the way he’s kind of trembling, the cold of his skin running up and down his arm and onto Sam’s wrist. “Let’s sit down, okay? Just for a second.”

He exhales sharply, eyes promising murder, but allows Sam to guide him back down to the couch. 

“What language was that?” Ruby asks, still staring. 

“I have no idea,” Sam says, and then, “Don’t sidetrack me, Rube, I’m clarifying things with you right now.”

She rolls her eyes, but only just barely. “Sure. What.”

“So you summoned him in my apartment. Right?”

“Yeah. I drew up the trap and Andy lit the candles and all of us recited the incantation—”

“ _All_ of you,” Sam repeats, skeptical. Lily and Andy, maybe. But Jake’s only just started going to school now, and Ava’s mind is too focused on her opiates and her fiancé to worry about things like letters and numbers. 

Ruby rolls her eyes more clearly this time, and Sam’s demon makes another one of those odd guttural sounds, shifting on the sofa like he’s upset. Instinct makes Sam reach over and grip his wrist, but he relaxes almost immediately and Sam keeps his hand there, idly running his thumb over the thin veins on the sensitive underside. “No,” Ruby says. “Not all of us. Jesus, Sam. I recited and I got Andy to say it back to me, for the full effect.”

“Okay.” Sam nods. “Then what?”

“Then he just—” she makes a vague gesture—“showed up, I guess. We were kind of trying to get him to talk to us at first, but he doesn’t. Um. He doesn’t seem capable of that, so.” She shrugs, absently biting her thumbnail. “Ava got bored and wanted to go, and Jake thought you were gonna wake up, so we just—left.”

Something is digging its claws into the back of Sam’s brain, exhaling annoyance and the beginnings of real anger. “Ruby,” he says, slowly. “How come I don’t remember you suggesting we summon a demon last night?”

Ruby hesitates. “I.”

Sam’s hand stills on his demon’s wrist, and for a moment they look at each other, the wings still flapping gently against Sam’s back. “You what?” Sam prompts, when enough time has gone by, and she sighs. 

“I put a spell on you, too,” she says, and Sam must look about as murderous as he feels because she holds up her hands and adds fast, “It’s not gonna mutate you or get you anything like a college degree or a better job or whatever the hell you really want but won’t let me give you—”

“ _Ruby_ —”

“ _All it did_ was get rid of your memories of last night, Sam, for fuck’s sake.” She’s on her feet now, and so is he, when did that happen. His demon is behind him with his wings outstretched, ready to kill but also glancing at Sam with his brow furrowed, concern flitting across his face every few seconds, an emotion he’s clearly not used to. “I didn’t think you were gonna want to remember that I tried getting you to summon a demon, especially since I didn’t think he’d actually get _stuck_ —”

Sam goes very still. 

Ruby stops talking mid-sentence. 

They’re both quiet for a long while. Outside, the world is starting to wake up, Sam can hear people chattering in the street below, the familiar ringing of the pharmacy door across the street as Mr. V opens up shop. The sun starts cutting through the curtains at Ruby’s window, sliding across the floor, another cool late-October morning that’s going to get steadily hotter as the day goes on, and Sam thinks it’s amazing that the world is still turning when he’s got this shit to deal with.

Finally: “What do you mean, ‘stuck’?” Sam asks, careful. Quiet. 

Ruby shakes her head. “Stuck on Earth, I meant—”

“Mm, except I don’t think that’s what you meant at all,” Sam says. 

She narrows her eyes at him. He raises his eyebrows, a silent warning, and she gives in, pressing her fingers to her temples. 

“Oh, Christ, Sam,” she says. “Fine. You win. Okay? I did something really _stupid_ last night, we were in your apartment and I—I didn’t know if it would work unless we used your name in the spell, since we were in your place of residence.”

“You used _my_ name—”

“The instruction book said if the spell was cast inside someone’s house then the person who did the casting had to own the house and since you weren’t there—”

“And you just decided that you were gonna go through with it anyway?” Sam yells. He’s past the point of anger, it’s transcended into something he doesn’t have a name for, boiling red hot and acidic just under his skin. That Ruby and the others would _risk his life_ like that, that they’d risk their _own_ lives—for a _demon—_

Ruby snaps, “It’s not like we could go wake you up, you fucking—” and Sam’s demon explodes again, offset by the yelling and by the threatening stance Ruby’s taken towards Sam, probably. His wings flare out to their full length and his eyes are blazing as he roars at her in—whatever that language is, all its odd guttural pauses between syllables, clicking diphthongs and an astonishing amount of vowels. Clearly he understands what they’re saying, or at least the gist of it, because he’s standing halfway in front of Sam, keeps repeating his name, tacking something like an extra syllable to the end of it— _Sam-ah,_ kind of swallowed up—and snarling, wild animal vicious. 

“Okay, okay,” Ruby says, dark eyes flashing actual, astonishing fear—Ruby is never afraid—as she backs up. “Sorry. Sorry. Whatever I did—” 

“You _bound_ me to a _demon,”_ Sam says, with his hand on his demon’s wrist, trying to calm him down. He’s starting to develop a headache too.

Instantly his demon whirls around, his wings just barely clipping Ruby on the shoulder—she doesn’t seem to notice, which Sam finds odd. His expression’s evened out, smoothed over into something more placating, almost neutral, but the storm is still in the backs of his irises. He’s standing between Sam and Ruby and he flips Sam’s wrist over, starts tracing patterns across the lines on his palm. 

His thumb catches on a callus and he looks up, eyes steady on Sam’s, though there’s something almost uncertain in them now. “Not—a demon,” he says, free hand on his chest. 

Sam lifts his eyebrows. “You’re not a demon?”

He shakes his head. “No.” Pause. Biting his lower lip, sucking it between his teeth like he’s thinking, and Sam makes himself look away. 

Only looks back when his not-demon is saying, soft, “Angel, Sam. Arc—archangel.”

Ruby makes this shocked little noise, and Sam hears her hit the sofa as she goes down, but he’s only looking at the angel in front of him, wings flared out, streaked with gold as the sun paints itself over their feathers. The broken crown of what Sam assumes was his halo, and he reaches up without thinking, touches the left horn. 

He shivers, eyes falling shut, but doesn’t move, and Sam’s hand falls from his horn to his face, his jaw. “Which angel are you?” he asks. 

Tight headshake. “Don’t—you don’t want to know,” he says, without looking at Sam.

Sam presses a little on his wrist, where it’s trapped between them. “I want a name to call you,” he says, gently. “Since Ruby tied us together with her fucking incompetence—”

“Hey!”

His angel sighs. “Sam—”

“Look, you’re not a demon. I don’t really care who you are just so long as that stays a fact—”

Those eyes fly open, blue and swirling with gray, ancient and sadder than anything Sam’s ever seen. He studies Sam’s face for a long moment, head turned a little into Sam’s touch, and then “Lucifer,” he says, pronouncing it more carefully than he has anything else. As though he hasn’t said the name in many years. Maybe hasn’t even thought of it. “Lucifer,” he repeats, and lets his wings relax a little at his sides, by degrees. 

_Well fuck me, I’m bound to Satan,_ Sam thinks, deliriously, and then kind of passes out for a minute. 

*

—Or it might be longer than a minute, because when Sam wakes up he’s back in his apartment, Lucifer sitting next to him, staring out the window, one hand resting on Sam’s arm. He looks down the minute Sam opens his eyes, attuned to him in a way Sam thinks should probably be scaring him a lot more than it actually is, and moves his hand on Sam’s arm, little scattered droplets of cold everywhere.

“Shit,” Sam says, rubbing at his head, and tries to sit up. 

“No,” Lucifer says almost immediately, flexing his hand on his arm, keeping him down. “Rest, Sam.”

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. “God,” he mutters, and, “this is so fucked up,” but he doesn’t make any move to push Lucifer away, either.

They’re both quiet for a while, Sam staring up at the ceiling, Lucifer cautiously stroking his arm, his wings drifting gently down, touching the back of Sam’s head.

Then Sam says, “So. You’re Satan.”

Lucifer flinches, barely perceptible movement that makes his feathers tremble. “Not very—I don’t like that name,” he says, “but yes.”

Sam lifts his eyebrows, trying really hard not to come off as judgmental. He thinks maybe he shouldn’t be so comfortable with Lucifer— _Lucifer_ —in the room, but. There’s that weird connection between them, and it isn’t as if Sam can go anywhere without him, anyway. 

“There are implications,” Lucifer starts, and then stops, waving his hand vaguely in the air. It’s not very concise, but Sam thinks he understands anyway—names are weighted, sometimes, with the wrong sort of history. Sam is already having trouble associating the Satan he’s grown up hearing about with the Lucifer in front of him, his long fire wings and the gentle sadness in his eyes and the hesitant way he speaks. 

He says, “Can’t believe I got bound to the most infamous angel in creation,” and then smiles, to show he’s ( _sort of_ ) joking. 

Lucifer licks his lips, and Sam sits up fast, his pulse jerking up a notch and he’s sure Lucifer can feel it, where he still has his fingers resting on Sam’s wrist. “Sam,” he says, an apologetic note in his voice.

“Not your fault,” Sam says immediately. “I’m just. I’m thinking.” He taps his free hand on his thigh. “There has to be a counter-spell.”

Lucifer tilts his head. 

“Ruby probably knows,” Sam says, gesturing with his eyes in the direction of her apartment. “But I’m not going back over there right now. Still so fuckin’ pissed at her, can’t believe she _did_ this—”

Lucifer’s wings rustle as he shifts them to touch Sam’s arm. “To lie is the worst sin,” he says, the first time he’s spoken without pausing, and something in his voice makes Sam look at him. There’s a dark expression on his face, something beyond anger and Sam wonders—

“All the Bible stories I’ve ever read—they all said you manipulate to get what you want—”

He shakes his head once, hard, jerky awkward movement but it’s obvious he means it. Mutters something in that strange archaic language from Ruby’s apartment, and then “Never,” he says, so fierce and defiant it startles Sam a little. “I do not.”

There’s more, Sam can see it in every strained line of his body, every tense glance he throws Sam’s way, but he either doesn’t have the words for it or doesn’t think Sam wants to hear it, because he keeps his mouth shut, thumb rubbing absently over Sam’s wrist like he’s forgotten it was there.

Sam flicks his gaze over to the clock resting above his fireplace. It’s half an hour before he’s scheduled to open at the bookstore, but he thinks he should get Lucifer into New Orleans early, to acclimate him somewhat to the city. If Lucifer’s going to be stuck with him until they can cast him back into Hell, he needs to at least try. 

“You wanna go get coffee and beignets?” he asks, swinging his legs under him to stand.

“Coffee—”

“—and beignets. C’mon.” Sam’s grinning, nudging Lucifer’s shoulder with his own. The day is already warming up, he can feel it in the sunlight streaming through his windows, and Lucifer’s skin feels incredible next to his, cold as the snows in Lawrence but not uncomfortable. “You’re gonna love it,” he says, and Lucifer doesn’t protest when Sam grabs him a jacket from the closet before they head out together.

*

Forty-five minutes later, they’re running down Royal Street—Lucifer had offered to fly them, with powdered sugar clinging to his lower lip, but Sam said no, it wouldn’t look right if they just disappeared from the café and then showed up a few blocks from the French Quarter out of nowhere. Sam’s fifteen minutes late and he has no idea how that happened and Mr. Singer is going to _kill_ him—

“Singer’s gonna kill you!” Ash Lindberg calls cheerfully from where he’s just rolling up the curtains on his store. 

“Fuck off,” Sam mutters in his direction, his feet slamming against the pavement, Lucifer keeping time beside him— _gliding,_ really, the asshole—and then they’re at Singer’s Books, and Bobby is in front of the store, his arms folded, his brow furrowed like he’s trying to figure out how he could have hired someone like Sam.

“Samuel,” he intones, one of the few people who insists on calling Sam by his full name. “You’re late.”

“I know,” Sam pants, out of breath. “I’m sorry. Sir. It’s just. Breakfast.”

Bobby raises his eyebrows. “And who is this?” he asks, gesturing at Lucifer. Like everyone else they’ve seen that day—Ruby doesn’t count, because Sam’s pretty sure she wouldn’t care even if she did notice—he doesn’t seem to realize Lucifer is sporting wings and horns and kind of radiating cold, charged up like the gaslights and standing off his skin in particles that Sam can see if he tilts his head just so. 

“This is, um. My—cousin. Lucian. He moved here from France recently, he wants. Um.” Bobby makes Sam sort of nervous, makes it hard for him to talk, and Lucifer gives him a quick look before stepping forward:

“ _M. Singer, j’espérais que vous pourriez me donner un emploi ici,”_ he says, smooth and fluent, and Bobby’s eyebrows lift, but he also holds the door open a little wider. 

“ _Je_ —uh,” he scratches at his beard. “Shit, kid, I don’t know French. But if you got better skills than Samuel here—”

“ _J’aime les livres,”_ Lucifer says coolly, with his eyebrows raised right back. 

Bobby sighs. “Come in,” he says. “Uh— _entrer, s’il vous plaît.”_

Lucifer walks in, his wings brushing gently at the doorframe. Bobby grips Sam just above the elbow before he can follow, and immediately the tightening in his chest starts up, but Lucifer stops before it can get bad, running his hand over Bobby’s desk, trying to look neutral.

“You better know enough of that goddamn language to keep him aware of what’s going on,” Bobby hisses. “Else I’m gonna have to let him go. He speak any English?”

Sam shifts uncomfortably, well aware of Lucifer’s eyes on them, the incident from earlier echoing in his mind. Hoping Lucifer is smart enough not to cause a scene here. “He speaks some,” Sam says. 

“Good,” Bobby grunts, and then releases Sam’s arm. “Then you make sure he starts using it. Got that?”

Sam nods. 

“There’s books need shelving in the historical section,” Bobby grunts. “Lucian, you watch Sam, today.”

“ _Oui,”_ Lucifer says mildly, and in the dim lighting of the store Sam is sure he’s the only one who can see the murderous glint to Lucifer’s eyes. 

He waits until they’re in the back of the store, Lucifer’s wings tucked carefully at his sides so he won’t knock anything over, and then Sam asks, “How come you can speak French better than English, Luce?”

Lucifer bites his lip. Not looking not looking, Sam thinks fast, and starts grabbing at texts, putting them in order. “I have been stuck in Hell for—a long time,” he says, after a while. Voice soft, kind of resigned. “Not sure how your friend got me out, but—the languages of the world. They have been lost to me for many—many centuries. French is—older than English. Comes back sooner.”

“Oh,” Sam says, quietly. His eyes flit subconsciously to Lucifer’s wings, their ragged appearance, the faint smear of blood in the corner of one. The cracks along his horns, and the hard way he holds himself, as if his shoulders are too heavy a burden for him to bear. “I. Lucifer—”

Lucifer’s shaking his head, though, and when he puts his hand on Sam’s arm the relief is instantaneous, all Sam’s worry falling away at once, tension leaving his chest. “It’s fine, Sam. It will come back.”

Sam hesitates, his finger on the spine of a book dedicated to the Mexican-American War, the one his grandfather fought during and was killed in. “Earlier,” he says, after a pause. “That language, in Ruby’s apartment—”

“The name is unknown to me in English,” Lucifer says, apologetic again. As if he thinks Sam could ever be angry with him over something like this. “ _Enokaina_ is the—closest translation. Language of angels.”

“ _Enokaina,”_ Sam repeats, testing the word on his tongue. It sounds faintly Greek, a little bit Sumerian. “It’s lovely,” he says, and Lucifer smiles, slow-dawning and brilliant as the Sun. 

“Thank you, Sam,” he murmurs, and for a second, it’s Sam’s hand, not his arm, that Lucifer is touching.

*

“So I’m pretty sure I found a spell that might be able to help you,” Ruby says, coming into the bookstore during lunch. 

“Yeah?” Sam says, his arm brushing Lucifer’s, pumping his leg up and down. “You mean, to send Luce back?”

Ruby nods, and hands over a book written entirely in Latin. The title is too dusty for Sam to make out properly, but the words inside are clear enough: reversal spells. Dark magic, stuff Sam never wanted to mess with. Still doesn’t, now. It scares the hell out of him, thinking of dealing with all this. He’s still pretty furious with Ruby, actually, for doing so in the first place. Yes, he enjoys Lucifer’s company, and he can tell Lucifer enjoys his, but none of this was supposed to happen. Sam is supposed to be working towards Tulane University, towards a law degree, a real job, a wife. Maybe even children. 

“Where’s the spell?” he asks, and doesn’t look right at Lucifer when he says it. 

She says the page number and he flips to it; it’s a hard spell, requires the full moon and blood and a long chant. Sam doesn’t read over the whole thing, just skims it, and hands Ruby the book. 

“So,” she says. “Thank me anytime.”

Sam digs his fingers into his knee, feels Lucifer’s hand fold over his. “Rube,” he says, carefully. “It’s just. It’s kinda complicated, isn’t it?”

She shrugs, narrowing her eyes at him a little. “Considering how long I’ve been doing this,” she says, and, “You won’t have to worry about it, Sam, I’m gonna take care of everything.”

“Oh, right,” he says, a little scornful. “Because that worked out _so well_ last time—”

“Hey, listen, do you want me to take the fucking Devil off your hands or what?”

Lucifer bristles next to Sam, the cold shooting sparks onto his skin, and Sam can actually feel the words rising up in his throat, angry and angelic. Flips his hand over fast, gripping Lucifer’s fingers, and Lucifer sighs. Some of the tension easing out of his frame, though the cold stays flowing steady into the room. 

Sam says, “Of course I do,” to Ruby, but it’s not entirely truthful, and the withering expression on Lucifer’s face when they make eye contact tells him he knows. But Sam can’t tell Ruby what he’s thinking, how he’s connected to Lucifer, in a way he’s never been with anyone else. The strong tie that tugs at the center of Sam’s chest, drawing them close even when they can measure a full five feet of distance between them without any ill effects. The way Lucifer looks at him, like he’s worth so much more than he ever believed. 

He _should_ want Lucifer back in Hell. But already he has no idea what’s going to happen to him once Lucifer’s gone.

Ruby’s frowning at him, her eyes darting between Sam and Lucifer, and, uneasy, he stands up, stretching out the cracks in his spine. “You work on the spell,” he tells her. “Try not to involve anyone else, okay, I don’t want Andy and the others getting hurt because of your stupidity—”

“Fuck you, Sam, you know I’m trying,” Ruby snaps, sounding exhausted, slamming the spell book closed on her lap. 

Sam wants to feel bad; he has known Ruby for a while, now, but he can’t. Not when she’s so careless, so—

 _Power-hungry,_ that’s the word for Ruby, and Sam grips Lucifer’s hand a little tighter and tugs him out of the bookstore without saying goodbye. 

*

And then it’s been two days since Sam woke up and found the Devil on his floor, two days he’s spent taking him to the Café du Monde for breakfast—apparently even angels can become partial to chicory and sugar if exposed—and then to the bookstore for their simultaneous shifts, Lucifer pretending he knows far less English than he really does, sticking close to Sam all day under the pretense of being new and uncertain at things. They eat oyster loaves for lunch, sitting on the levee together, Lucifer finishing his sandwich off mostly for Sam’s sake, not out of any real necessity for nutrition, though Sam thinks he does like the taste. Then it’s back to the store until closing, and then home, walking along the slowly darkening streets, Sam watching Lucifer’s profile glow under the lamps, the reflection of his wings in the dull yellow light. 

A little under forty-eight hours with Lucifer and Sam is honestly not sure he poses any real threat, to Sam or anyone else. He’s been quiet, no need for _Enokaina_ outbursts without Ruby to rile him up, and helpful to customers, and when they go to Sam’s apartment in the evenings there’s a strange sense of almost domesticity as they settle down, Sam cooking sausages for himself and Lucifer watching, his wings draped comfortably over Sam’s shoulders, amusement in his eyes when Sam smacks his hand away from the hot oil. 

His dreams have been intense, full of flashing images, frozen over and smelling of storms, the brush of feathers between his legs, hot wet mouth on his. Sam has woken up shaking and hard, wanting in the way he knows he shouldn’t, shivering and fearful of his own emotions as he looks at Lucifer stretched out on the floor, wings lined up along his arms, breathing slow and deep. 

Sam thinks there should be some kind of warning label: don’t get too attached to having the Devil around, or you’ll fall too, but he’s too busy watching Lucifer watch the Mississippi as they eat their crab cake dinners, the sun sliding slow down the horizon and Lucifer’s wings shivering in the breeze coming off the water. 

*

“How’s the spell coming, Rube?” Sam asks, because he feels like he has to, not out of any real interest, on the evening of day four.

“Mm,” Ruby says, and, “full moon’s on Halloween night.”

“Of course it is.”

“And you’ll need to bring Lucifer to meet me at St. Louis Cemetery—”

“Wait, what? Why you?” Sam looks at Lucifer, who is feigning total disinterest in the conversation, running his fingers over the dusty spines of Ruby’s books. “I thought—”

She smirks. “You thought that you’d get to send him back special,” she finishes, and Sam grits his teeth at the condescending tone in her voice. “Sorry, Sam. Spell calls for the person who did the summoning. Not the recipient.” She drums her fingers on the top of her book, looking annoyingly superior. 

“Lucifer’s bound to me though—”

“A spell’s a spell, Sam, do you wanna fuck the whole thing up and get stuck with him forever?”

 _Yes._

Out loud, he doesn’t answer, and she glares at him. “I thought you’d be happy with it like this, Sam,” she says. “You didn’t want any part of the demon summoning to begin with, and now you don’t have to deal with putting him back in, either.”

He can’t look at Lucifer now, feeling the cold tendrils snaking gently up his arms, concern and comfort automatically coming from him, twining around Sam and for the first time in many, many years, he finds himself wanting to cry. “Yeah,” he says finally, hoarse. “Yeah, Ruby. Thanks. You’re right.”

Dean had always told Sam he was the worst liar, but he must be getting better at it because she barely blinks at him. “Sure,” she says. “Just remember—Halloween’s in five days. Well, I mean—five and a half, I guess, but it’s soon. So be ready. And don’t worry about anything, I’m gonna take care of all the parts of it, your _friends_ —” mockingly—“won’t have to deal with any of this either.”

He bites his lip very hard down on what he wants to say, stands up. “C’mon, Luce,” he says, and immediately cold fingers close down on his shoulder, and both of them are transported back to Sam’s apartment in a rustle of wings. 

“Sam,” Lucifer murmurs, stroking his thumb down the side of Sam’s face, and Sam realizes he’s trembling for no reason. He makes himself stop, makes himself stand up and smile because there’s nothing else he can do, how can he possibly tell Lucifer that he wants him to stay, wants this cold burn and tug in his chest for the rest of his life?

He says, “I’m gonna make us supper and if you touch the oil in the pan—” and Lucifer smiles too, folding his wings against his sides and following Sam into the kitchen. 

*

“Um, excuse me, sir?” 

Quiet little voice spoken up from somewhere behind them, and Sam and Lucifer pause midway through reading _Paradise Lost_ side-by-side in the stacks of the bookstore. Lucifer’s pointing out inaccuracies and then nudging Sam’s shoulder with his every time Sam calls him “too stuck on details”. They’re both not thinking about how it’s four days until Halloween, now. 

There’s a girl, can’t be more than thirteen, standing hesitant staring at them, and Sam smiles up at her, starting to push himself up to his feet. “Can I help you?” he asks, hunching his shoulders in and pushing an earnest expression on his face. 

“Yes,” she says, still in that quiet voice. “My momma was wondering if—well, if you have cookbooks? She’d have come herself, only—she just recently, um, gave birth to my little brother, and.” The girl trails off, her face bright red, but Sam nods in understanding, still smiling at her. 

“Yeah, we have cookbooks,” he says. “They’re right that way—” He points, but she’s shaking her head, biting her lower lip. 

“I’m sorry, but could you take me? I can’t read,” and she sounds on the verge of tears, so Sam gives her an awkward pat on the shoulder, glancing over at Lucifer who stands up automatically, wings rustling the pages of Milton on the floor. They’re both heading in the direction of cookbooks with the girl when Bobby calls from the front of the store:

“Lucian, Winchester, one of you come up here, help me with this transaction.”

A cold wave of real fear washes over Sam’s chest for a minute. Lucifer speaks English well at this point, only uses fluent French in front of Bobby to stump him and has an innate talent for charming the people who ask him for help. He and Sam have had no problems so far with anyone asking them to look at separate sections of the store, but it would look odd, now, if Sam asked the girl to wait while he went with Lucifer, or if they both ignored Bobby’s command. 

He says, “I’ll take her—you—” and finds his voice is already struggling. 

Lucifer is pale, his eyes wide with alarm. “Sam,” he says, very quietly, and Bobby calls again:

“One of you come here now or both of you are gonna be out of a job!”

“Just—fast—” Sam says to Lucifer, and steers the girl off in the right direction before Lucifer can say his name again like that, something soft and undefinable in his voice and if Sam hadn’t already wanted to do whatever Lucifer asked, he sure as hell does now. 

They’re seven feet apart and the searing pain is shooting in Sam’s chest, sparks of it crashing through his ribs and his lungs, so that even when he tries to stay standing straight up he finds he can’t. The girl is asking if he’s okay but he can barely hear her, his vision tunneling, and the farther he forces himself to walk away from Lucifer the worse it becomes, until he’s soaked in sweat, tears on his face, hands scrabbling frantically for any solid purchase. He can hear faint whimpers echoing in his head and he’s aware on a vague level of lying down, palm pressed hard on the carpet. Sam sees the girl’s shoe in his vision, blurry and gray and fading fast, and his heart squeezes in too hard and he thinks _well fuck I’m dying,_ and then his mind goes black. 

*

When he wakes up Bobby is standing over him, disapproving frown on his face. “Samuel,” he says, arms folded across his chest. “Are you all right?”

“Uh,” Sam says intelligently. His mouth feels stuck together, too dry. Lucifer is lying about a foot away from him, horns throwing shadows on the floor from the gaslights overhead but no one seems to notice, even then. The girl who wanted the cookbook is standing off to one side, crying. 

“What the hell happened to you?” Bobby asks. “You and your cousin both—you just sort of fell over.”

“It, um.” Sam rubs at his eyes. His chest aches a little, cold lightning playing out over his lungs. His heart rate isn’t as fast as it was when he went down but it still hurts, pushing against his ribs. “I kind of—fainted? I guess maybe we skipped eating breakfast or something, I’m sorry, Mr. Singer—”

“I don’t pay you to pass out in my store and scare the living shit out of my customers,” Bobby says, irritated, but there’s something close to concern under his tone, and Sam breathes out, relieved. He probably won’t end up getting fired after all.

Lucifer is stirring next to Sam, and it takes all his willpower not to reach over and touch, keeping his fingers curled hard by his side. He sends a reassuring smile up at the girl, who nods back, looking shaken. She’s clutching a cookbook tight to her chest and Sam wonders who got it for her. Probably Bobby, while he and Lucifer were—

“Sam,” Lucifer says, rough, and Sam moves instantly closer, so that he’ll be the first thing Lucifer sees when he opens his eyes. 

“Hey, Luce, I’m here,” he says, quiet. 

“ _Je ne… je ne pense pas que je peux travailler plus aujourd’hui,”_ Lucifer murmurs, and Sam laughs, the sound catching at the back of his throat. 

“‘S okay, Luce, you don’t have to,” he says, getting most of the meaning from Lucifer’s tone, and then Bobby is clearing his throat at them, shuffling his feet a little. 

“You boys are free to take the rest of the afternoon off, if you—if you need to,” he says. “I got the store covered.”

“Thanks, Mr. Singer,” Sam says, and Lucifer echoes him, soft and in French. 

Then there’s a pause while both of them struggle to stand up, Sam pushing on his elbows until he’s sitting and then getting to his feet with a boost from Lucifer’s wings. Reaching down and tugging on Lucifer’s wrist, almost gasping out loud at the contact as he pulls him up, the cold of Lucifer searing its way down into Sam where it belongs and for a second Sam can’t let go, watching it crawl up both their arms, breath coming fast. 

Bobby says, “Feel better,” as they’re walking out, but Sam barely hears him. He’s too busy clutching onto Lucifer, helpless to keep more than half a foot from him now, Lucifer’s wings beating against Sam’s back, too rough and frantic for Sam to believe Lucifer isn’t just as freaked-out as he is. 

Sam says, “Let’s get the fuck outta New Orleans, Luce,” and they vanish from Royal Street in a flurry of feather and muscle. 

*

They end up on the outskirts of Orleans Parish, in a rundown plantation surrounded by oak trees and covered in long, wild vines of poison ivy and sumac. Emerald and faint yellow, and small bugs that are braving the colder weather still floating sluggishly through the thick vegetation. Lucifer waves the more dangerous plants aside without touching and they settle down together on the porch, sunken in the middle and water-logged, built of pale cypress wood and Sam folds his legs up, watching Lucifer next to him, the scrim of afternoon sunlight framing his face like a halo. 

Their hands are touching, where they rest between them. Lucifer keeps rubbing his thumb over the back of Sam’s knuckles. He’s shaking a little bit. 

“Let’s not do that again,” Sam says, after a long time. 

“No,” Lucifer agrees, running his free hand down the side of the porch. 

Sam hesitates, staring out over the alley leading up to the house, the branches curving over it like arms, shielding them in. “Is it the connection?” he asks. “I mean—why can’t we be apart, why does it do that.”

Lucifer bites his lower lip, and Sam stares because he can’t help it anymore, because he’s too drained from earlier and there’s still a faint pang in his chest and he thinks maybe wanting like that isn’t as bad as the alternative of having to live without this. 

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he says, “except that I am bound to you while on Earth and the first morning, when you touched me—you sealed the contract.”

“Is that,” Sam starts, and then has to clear his throat, mouth suddenly dry. “Is that why I feel—” He pauses, unsure how to word it, gestures between them. His fingers brush Lucifer’s wings and a shudder rolls through both of them at once, vicious hot feeling Sam’s only experienced before in dreams, visceral and heavy like a punch to the gut. 

“That could be part of it, yes,” Lucifer murmurs, and Sam’s not sure if he’s aware that he’s staring at Sam’s mouth. Gripping Sam’s hand between them, instead of just touching, and it comes on sudden, for Sam, the need and want which has been building up in his stomach since the morning Lucifer first crashed into his apartment. 

He says, “Lucifer,” all rough and shot to hell, and Lucifer says, “Sam,” and his hand comes up, touches Sam’s jaw. The cold of his fingers is oddly soothing and Sam leans into it, kind of exhaling in this quietly desperate way, and then he takes Lucifer’s hand, brings it to his mouth. Kisses each fingertip and then his palm, and then Lucifer’s mouth is on his, already so familiar. 

It’s like nothing Sam’s ever done before, kissing Lucifer: the hesitant way he moves his jaw, the taste of him, as much lightning and ash and ice as it feels to touch him. He kisses like he doesn’t know how, and Sam drags him closer, trembling, already half-hard just from this. 

Sam brings a hand up, lets it hover over Lucifer’s wing. “Can I—” he starts, barely moving his mouth from Lucifer’s, and his angel is already nodding, saying:

“Yes, Sam, yes, anything,” and Sam presses down on the wing and Lucifer groans, low wrecked sound, and then Sam is on his back on the porch, Lucifer hovering over him, hand on his chest, where his heart is slamming into his ribs. 

His wings are beating hard, rustling the branches above them. His mouth is red and all Sam wants is to have it on his again, body arching up instinctively to try and find some kind of friction. He’s never felt desire as deep as this. 

Lucifer’s saying, “Let me, Sam, let me—” and Sam’s nodding, agreeing to whatever, all that Lucifer wants, and Lucifer grips the lapels of Sam’s jacket and kisses him, rocking forward with his hips, both of them falling fast and all Sam can do is hold on. 

*

Two days before Halloween, Sam and Lucifer go to the bookstore before it opens, Lucifer keeping himself hidden just inside their range of separation while Sam hunches his back and coughs and tells Bobby that both himself and his “cousin” have caught some kind of virus and could they please have off until they’re feeling better. Bobby waves his hand, looking pretty disgusted, says, “Get out of here, boy, before you cough up a lung,” and so Sam and Lucifer slip away, fingers tangled, Sam shooting little smiles at Lucifer over his shoulder, face flushed. They make a stop at the Café du Monde, Lucifer eating his beignets fast and getting the powder spread out over his hands and his mouth, and then it’s back to Sam’s apartment, curtains drawn and door locked. 

Two days left. Sam can’t breathe without it hitching in his chest, keeps one hand spread out over Lucifer’s ribs as he kisses him, their bodies laid out on the floor like sacrifices before the altar. Lucifer wraps his wings around them, the cold spiraling out into their arms and legs and mouths, he rests their foreheads together and breathes soft _Enokaina,_ words that sound like praise, Sam’s name split in two syllables over and over again and Sam kissing every inch of Lucifer he can reach, thinking on a loop _I won’t let her take you back I won’t let you leave me._

They stay holed up in Sam’s apartment, curled around each other, not talking much because they’ve never needed to. Sam reads out loud to Lucifer from ancient Latin texts, makes him laugh and they share bitter coffee Sam manages to brew up, not as good as the café’s but it tastes the same in Lucifer’s mouth, anyway. 

“Lucifer,” Sam whispers, the night before, with his fingers tracing absent patterns over Lucifer’s chest, and Lucifer rolls over, catching his hand. 

“Sam,” he murmurs, soft, and kisses him, lips curving into a smile against Sam’s, sparking cold and happiness and his wings are shifting gently the whole time, quiet pleased noises escaping his throat when Sam’s hand finds his hipbone. 

He wasn’t even supposed to be an angel, Sam thinks, furious, when they’re lying close and quiet and waiting for the dawn to break on their last day. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, bound to something from Hell. 

He’s fallen in love with the Devil, it’s ruined his life, and Sam doesn’t even care. 

*

They don’t go to the cemetery until it is absolutely necessary, the sky deep ink above them, stars glittering in white sprawled across the curtains of air. Sam’s legs are still pretty weak from that last orgasm Lucifer wrung out of him, and so they fly to the gates and then stand out of sight, hands curved together, waiting. 

“So this is it,” Sam murmurs, his head tucked against Lucifer’s shoulder, a wing gently nudging against his cheek.

“Yes,” Lucifer says, his hands stroking slow up and down Sam’s arms. And then: “Sam—”

“Yeah, Luce.” 

“I don’t—” He hesitates. Sam lifts his head to watch, waiting; Lucifer’s profile reflected soft in the raw pale moonlight, his sad gray eyes cast downward. So close that Sam can see every line etched into his skin. 

“If you want to leave now,” Lucifer continues after a moment, the words coming up hard like they’re being wrenched from his throat. “I’d understand—after all, it isn’t as if we’ll see each other again—”

But Sam’s already kissing him before the sentence is over, crushing them together and biting almost fiercely on his lower lip, licking into Lucifer’s mouth so he can extract that low moaning sound he always makes when Sam fucks their tongues together.

“I will never leave you, Lucifer,” he says, gripping Lucifer’s wrist between them, the cold charging particles over his skin. “Never.”

Lucifer opens his mouth, looking like he wants to protest, but at that moment Ruby’s voice sounds from in the cemetery: 

“Sam, Lucifer, for Christ’s sake, I can _hear_ you—” and Sam swallows. Makes himself pull back half an inch, but it’s already too much.

“Okay,” he says, rougher than he meant. “Let’s do this.”

The cemetery is wild, overgrown with weeds, vines climbing up the sides of weathered stone and most of it is drying out in the early autumn air, going yellow and crisp in the places where sunlight doesn’t reach. Sam and Lucifer pick their way between stones dating back as far as a hundred years, Sam running his hand over the marble and not thinking about what tonight is, or the full moon hanging high and silver over their heads.

Ruby is standing in the immediate center, beside a mausoleum engraved with the family name of Robillard. She’s cleared a space on a round stone, drawn up a symbol Sam doesn’t recognize and is letting slow heavy drops of blood fall into a chalice in the middle, inlaid with diamonds and—well, and rubies. It looks like pure gold, and Sam scratches idly at the back of his neck, vaguely uncomfortable for reasons he can’t define. 

She glances up as they approach, small private smile curving the corner of her mouth. “Hey,” she says. Casual.

Sam glances at Lucifer. He has his wings folded hard against his back, looks as wary as Sam feels. There’s moonlight glinting off his horns and he’s watching Ruby work, his mouth growing increasingly thin, and Sam doesn’t want him to go.

“Rube,” he starts, glancing at her book, the Latin spell she has open to send Lucifer back, and she holds up her hand. Something dark and twisted comes out of her mouth and suddenly Sam can’t talk, can barely breathe, his throat closing up until it feels like the size of a mouse tunnel and he falls to his knees in the dead leaves, choking, hand grasping for purchase in the dirt and the weeds. Out of the corner of his eyes he sees Lucifer start forward, wings flared out, murderous expression on his face, but Ruby flicks her hand at him, says something else, and Lucifer is rendered immediately immobile, hands reaching helplessly for Sam, mouth moving soundless over his name. 

Ruby’s eyes are glittering in the moonlight, look almost black, and Sam watches her from his crouched position, struggling to pull in oxygen. “What—” he tries to say, and she snaps:

“Shut up, Sam. God, can’t even obey the simplest fucking spell, you’re the most stubborn witch I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. Jesus.” She wraps a bandage around her palm, swishes the liquid around in the chalice. “Not really the brightest, though, are you. Because if you were—” and she leans down, then, presses her knife against his throat—“you’d have picked up on this a _long_ time ago.”

She straightens up, and Sam finds himself able to breathe again, though he still can’t move and it’s driving him out of his fucking mind, inches from Lucifer and he can’t _get_ to him. “Picked up on _what,_ exactly,” he gasps out. “That you’re fucking insane?” He stares at her, at the almost manic smile on her face, the way her hair lifts off her shoulders even though there’s no wind. 

“Are you a _demon?”_ he asks, incredulous, and she bursts out laughing, the sound ugly and ringing through the cemetery.

“Oh my god,” she says. “That’s cute—no, that’s really fucking _priceless,_ Sam. No. No, I’m not a demon. But god, I wish I was.” She glances at Lucifer, then flicks her finger and he comes towards her, stiff, like he’s being pulled. “No, I’m just really good at spells. I mean, _really_ good. I practiced a long time before you got here, I roped in those _idiots_ —” she means the coven, and Sam feels his blood run hot and cold all at once in his chest, beyond furious—“and then I found you. Lonely, sad, _desperate_ you—god, Sam, you’ve honestly been the first _fun_ thing I’ve had to do since I started this crap. Getting you to want to be part of the coven, never forcing you into anything you didn’t want—by the time I got around to actually doing the summoning, you trusted me _way_ more than you should have. It was too fucking easy.”

He blinks, slow dawning horror coming over him. “You—bound me to Lucifer on _purpose?”_

“Give the kid a law degree,” Ruby says, sarcastic. Her hand resting lightly on Lucifer’s shoulder where he can’t jerk it away, and Sam struggles against the binds, wanting so desperately to run, to kill her, no one touches Lucifer but him—

“What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?”

She sighs. “No need to be rude, Sam. It’s not like I summoned Lucifer on purpose. I was mostly aiming for just a demon, okay? Just any demon would’ve done for what I want—but getting the ruler of Hell himself here? It was just too good.” Her fingers trail down Lucifer’s arm, near his wing, and he’s glaring at her, heated and hateful, and Sam can almost hear the _Enokaina_ running in his mind. Wishes they were both free, so Lucifer could throw her against the stone and Sam could run her through with her own knife. 

Instead, he has to stay there, knees digging into the cold ground while Ruby dips her fingers into the chalice and then runs them down the side of Lucifer’s face, wet and sticky with her blood. “I know you think I’m completely off the wall,” she says. “But I know what I want, Sam. And it’s not anything here on Earth. It’s not the fucking coven or you or even New Orleans—I want Hell. I want _all_ of Hell,” and she draws another line down Lucifer’s throat, over the jerking knot of his Adam’s apple. 

“What do you—”

“First, I’m going to throw Lucifer into a really specific section of Hell. The one he’ll never get out of; believe me, it exists, I’ve done my research. And then—” her eyes light up, she’s practically glowing—“then _I_ get to take over Hell. I have the magic. I know all about demons. I’m going to be the best fucking ruler that shithole has ever seen, Sam, and it’s all thanks to you and your fallen angel over here.” She smirks, pats Lucifer on the shoulder, and then walks around to the opposite side of the table, taking the Latin book as she goes. 

“Ruby, _don’t_ —”

But she’s reading off the page, her voice resounding in the empty cemetery. The moon is glowing brighter with every word she says, the blood in the chalice swirling, cracks appearing in the stone as the symbol opens itself up, massive dark pit and Sam’s physically recoiling from it, some great force inside shoving him away even as Ruby’s magic forces him to stay in one place. 

He sees Lucifer’s eyes shining bright, that ice blue rising up from within him, the invisible power dragging him forward. Ruby’s screaming now, her hand waving in the air as she reads, and suddenly Sam feels the hold on his shoulders loosen, like Ruby’s too concentrated on Lucifer to worry about him anymore. 

He jumps up immediately, running at her, and her eyes flit to him, barest pause in her incantation before she’s shoving him against the mausoleum, pinning him to the cement and resuming her spell. Sam strains against the new holds, shouts, “ _Lucifer_ —” and Lucifer’s head snaps up, as if repelling a great magnet. 

Something slams Sam’s head back against the stone and the last thing he sees before he blacks out is Lucifer’s eyes, wide and wild and helpless as he’s dragged back into the Pit. 

*

Sam wakes up slow. Painful. The back of his head is throbbing and there’s the taste of grave dirt in his mouth, and he rolls over almost absently, reaching for Lucifer on instinct before he remembers that Lucifer isn’t there anymore. 

_Fuck,_ Sam thinks, everything else a blank, and makes himself open his eyes. 

He’s in his own apartment, which is sort of surprising; he’d expected to wake up in the cemetery but then he supposes he could’ve walked here, unconscious, or maybe Ruby took pity on him and sent him back before making her way into Hell, insane slaughtering bitch that she is. It’s cold in the room, and there’s a low dull ache in the center of Sam’s chest, part of him missing now and forever and he steels himself to sit up, to face this first day of eternity alone.

Lucifer is sitting on the floor beside the balcony, wings curled around his shoulders, staring out over the city. 

Sam makes a soft, surprised sound, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress before he even knows what he’s doing, and Lucifer looks over fast enough to make himself wince, his face lighting up when he sees Sam, every part of him softening and relaxing. He murmurs, “Sam,” and that’s all Sam needs before he’s rushing forward, sinking to the ground beside his mate and folding his arms around him, kissing his neck, his cheek, his lips. Crying before he even realizes he’s doing so, trembling, running his hands up and down Lucifer’s arms, over his face, his wings. 

“What—Luce—”

Lucifer’s hand comes up, presses against Sam’s jaw. The cold inside him pushing into Sam’s skin, eroding the dull burn instantly, and Sam lets his head drop onto Lucifer’s shoulder for a minute, mouth resting on his bare skin, smiling uncontrollably and gripping his thigh and so, so relieved. 

“How?” Sam manages finally, with his thumb slashed across Lucifer’s wrist, and Lucifer smiles a little bit, tucking Sam’s hair back behind his ear. 

“She paused,” he says. “When you ran for me, and she stopped for a moment to pin you to the mausoleum—it ruined her spell.” His wing brushes against Sam’s arm, careful quiet familiar gesture Sam never thought he’d have again. For the first time, it opens up a channel between them, short-lived image in Sam’s head, a memory: the portal closing up on the stone. Ruby staring in shock, her binding charms loosening on both Lucifer and Sam, so that Sam drops to the ground as Lucifer rises up, his wings flared out, hand on Ruby’s forehead and deep angry _Enokaina_ spilling from his lips seconds before she crumbles in a flash of white. Lucifer rushing to Sam’s side, gathering him up, flying both of them out. 

“So she’s dead,” Sam says, when the vision ends, and is only a little surprised to find he’s not sorry. At all. 

Lucifer nods, keeping his expression carefully blank. “And even if she had lived—it would have made no difference. Ruby was a very talented witch,” he says. “But her knowledge of Latin left much to be desired, particularly in understanding the details.” He lifts a folded square of paper from his pocket, and Sam reads it over: the page from Ruby’s spell book, ripped out, smeared with her blood in the corner. 

In Latin, in the center of the page, are the words: _to achieve the full effect of this incantation, the one whose name was cast at the binding must be the one to recite the spell._

Sam stares for a moment, uncomprehending. 

“It was your name that was said originally,” Lucifer murmurs. “Not hers. She misinterpreted this. Even without the pause—the spell would not have worked, because it can only be you, Sam. It can only ever be you.”

“Oh,” Sam breathes out. Sudden giddiness filling his chest, tension bleeding from his shoulders, and his mind is wide open and bright with all the possibilities of the future. The rest of his life with Lucifer, maybe even the rest of eternity with him, and it’s nothing at all like the bleak prospect it was just ten days ago. It’s hopeful and warm and Sam doesn’t want anything that isn’t this. 

Then Lucifer’s fingers curl harder against his jaw, tugging him gently forward. Sam kisses him, slow-dawning smiles rising up on both their faces as they realize they get to _keep_ each other, and he forgets everything else.

**Author's Note:**

> Foreign language translations (all taken from Google translate): 
> 
> Sam's Latin: "what’s your name? where are you from? should I be afraid of you?" 
> 
> Lucifer's French, pt. 1: "Mr. Singer, I was hoping you could give me a job here." / "I love books."  
> Lucifer's French, pt. 2: "I don't think I can work anymore today."


End file.
